A reason for living.
Categories
Transformation without Change
The world is changing, and institutions are working frantically to ensure that nothing fundamental changes. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle in which the machinery of (i.e. self-)preservation becomes an engine of destruction.
We have built a civilisation capable of transforming an entire planet, yet incapable of managing the consequences.
Romance promises fulfilment, but its variously acquired mechanisms are fuelled by dissatisfaction. Biology supplies the desire, culture sells the fantasy, and commerce profits from the effectively irreconcilable distance between desire and fulfilment.
When regulation threatens commercial survival, the rules can become part of the game. Star Entertainment illuminates deeper institutional contradiction.
The internet promised to make life easier. Instead, we increasingly organise our lives around its demands, adapting to systems that profit from the dependencies, distractions and frustrations they perpetuate.
The absence of violence is not necessarily peace. From personal relationships to international affairs, insecurity persists when attempts to resolve conflict reproduce the conditions that generate it.
Categories
War, Wealth and Wickedness
War, wealth and political insecurity reproduce the problems they ostensibly intend to resolve, sustaining destructive relationships whose continuity subsequently appears necessary.
Things do not exist first and then form relationships. They emerge through relationships that sustain them. Identity, time and existence arise from differences that can never be completely resolved.
A country unable to defend itself risks losing its independence. A country unable to question itself risks losing the capacity to recognise when that independence has already been compromised.
Categories
Limits of Institutional Understanding
Institutions do not merely resist criticism. They regulate the conditions under which criticism can become intelligible, credible and consequential.
We have built institutions that teach people how to think, then reward them for knowing when not to.
